Wonder Lost
A Poem About Mystery and Wonder in Childhood
Memories, as shooting stars, scratch at the black skull of sky
strike it as matches, ending million-mile journeys in annihilation
My family raked autumn leaves into a pile as tall as me
The boy me jumped smiling into them, found her brittle scent
The boy me laid on lawn, dizzy under the azure sea
Gravity reversed and I fell up into her laugh
I fought dragons here and there, never rescued damsels
If I had, they would have all been her
She was the soft in my quivering first kiss
lips that blew stars like dandelion seeds from the stem of my fear
Yet each breath, each moment past, gathered brinks against us
Upon the moor of those uncertainties, I built my mistake, a cabin shelter
I lost her in the wilding wind
her hand slipped like spring from winter
I cried to the colloidal night
searched outside for her silver silhouette
Searched, for a snake eye breach of light
where god knifed the starless fabric of my life
Tore it just enough to pull her through
Did she look over her shoulder?
I searched, but there was nothing
no silhouette, no knife, no snake eye light
Only my empty palm unable to hold
the linger of her warmth, memory of her skin
A gust broke our cabin window
stole the flame from our candle
Our lace curtains flapped in moonlight
tugged by the stripping cold
Wind reclaimed the dust of yesterday
what was left of us, our borrowed history
I wept as a victim does
with stones of himself falling from his eyes
The cabin collapsed, I stood unwalled
Dawns crashed in strobes against my ever dark horizon
Wonder by wonder burned up as they entered me
Deep called to deep, as the born must find home in the dark
Until, perhaps it was the knife of god
that cut free a blood of painful light
It rinsed open my eyes in revelation rain
and the dawn stayed still in this: It was me, who let her go
It was me, who built this cabin to hide from mystery
My stone tears sweetened in the petrichor of my confession
Now I know, unpursued, she always flees
as beauty turns her face, when I look away
So, I gathered the cabin rubble and replanted splinters as her sequoias
Surely, she will return to them and find me waiting
